1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for remedying problems in virtual server systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Usually, problems tend to occur in business from wrong settings, mismatching settings, failures in software components or similar causes. To address such problems, the previous state can be recovered instantaneously by rolling back the system by the use of snapshots storing the previous state. Especially by using snapshots of virtual servers, the previous state can be restored for each individual virtual server to enable any problem having arisen in any virtual server to be remedied instantaneously.
Related methods by which system problems are remedied by rolling back using snapshots are already known, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,080,279 (B2) [AUTOMIC ROLLBACK] and other pieces of literature. U.S. Pat. No. 7,080,279 (B2) discloses a method by which, when any system problem is detected, the problem is remedied by automatically rolling back the system by the use of a snapshot.
When a problem occurs, usually the system administrator analyzes the problem to identify its cause, and decides on a measure to eliminate the cause. This is to enable the most effective remedy to be selected against the problem and to prevent a similar problem from arising again. However, some business systems may require minimization of downtime. If the system administrator cannot identify the cause of the problem in a short enough period of time, often it is more effective to skip any analysis for finding out the cause of the problem and instead recover the previous trouble-free state by using snapshots.
While analysis of a problem occurring in a business system to identify its cause requires specialized knowledge on applications and databases constituting the business system, a problem remedying method using snapshots of virtual servers enables the system administrator, even if he or she has no specialized knowledge on components constituting the business system, such as applications and databases, to remedy the problem having occurred in the business system.